Link to GNSS/PNT Dependency Survey - https://forms.gle/1hG5AadEWXmSWc787
Links to researchgate.net Page for Essays and Mini-Papers
El Nino's Long Shadow 1997 to 2026 (UPDATED - 27 June 2026)
El Niño is not an anomaly; it is a recurring, predictable mode of climate variability whose humanitarian toll widens as the socioeconomic and ecological conditions through which it operates deteriorate. This article traces three major events across nearly thirty years, the 1997–98 "El Niño of the Century", the 2015–16 super event, plus the strong but not super 2023–24 event, and it argues that the physics of the Pacific has shifted far less than the vulnerability of the populations that physics exposes. Reading the record through the pressure-and-release model along with the Sendai Framework's treatment of risk as a function of hazard, exposure and vulnerability, the analysis shows how each event leaves legacies, material and ecological, that successive events exacerbate; reef systems bleached in 2016 had not regained cover before the marine heatwaves that followed, while the Horn of Africa passed from the 2021–23 drought into renewed rainfall failure with scarcely any respite. Attention then turns to the developing 2026 event, which by June had crossed into El Niño conditions with a very strong peak the most likely outcome. Evidence suggests the real danger lies less in the forecast than in the response. Anticipatory finance and early warning have advanced, yet coverage remains uneven and chronically underfunded precisely where exposure is concentrated, a gap deepened by the wind-down of USAID. The central claim is modest but firm: forecast accuracy has consistently outpaced the institutional capacity to act on it.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/408299873_When_the_Pacific_Burns_Updated
The 2026 Iran War as Disaster Capitalism: A Shock Doctrine Analysis
This paper applies Naomi Klein's shock doctrine framework to the 2026 US-Israeli war on Iran, examining the political economy of disaster capitalism in real time. Drawing on Klein (2007), Harvey (2005), Monbiot and Hutchison (2024), Beck (2006), and MacKinnon and Derickson (2012), alongside primary documentation from the SIGIR Iraq reconstruction record, the analysis identifies five concurrent sites of economic extraction activated by the conflict: US energy producers benefiting from Strait of Hormuz closure; Tier 1 defence contractors on emergency production surge contracts; war-risk insurers and shipping financiers; post-conflict reconstruction consortia positioned through early-entry IDIQ contracting mechanisms; and actors proximate to executive decision-making whose trading patterns have attracted congressional and regulatory scrutiny. The paper further argues that the shock may be accelerating a sixth, and structurally more significant, redistribution: the gradual displacement of the petrodollar architecture that has underpinned US fiscal and monetary primacy since 1974, with China as the principal structural beneficiary. Counterarguments from Harrison (2011), Phelps et al. (2011), and Stiglitz (2007) are engaged directly. The paper concludes that the evidence demonstrates a consistent systemic pattern independent of conspiratorial intent — and that the enforcement mechanisms ordinarily capable of establishing accountability have been simultaneously and systematically reduced.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/403530713_The_2026_Iran_War_as_Disaster_Capitalism
GNSS PNT Dependency Article
Global Navigation Satellite System/Position, Navigation and Timing (GNSS/PNT) provides essential services in both positioning and time synchronisation, extending its application well beyond traditional navigation. Synchronised timing is now integral to distributed networks across various sectors, many of which rely on GNSS/PNT in indirect and not fully recognised ways (Government Office for Science, 2018, pp. 4-5). This growing dependence has outpaced user awareness, producing a “system of systems” vulnerability in which GNSS/PNT constitutes a single point of failure for multiple interconnected services (GO-Science, 2018, p. 5). The fundamental technical vulnerability is that GNSS/PNT signals arrive at Earth’s surface at power levels significantly below ambient noise, making receivers susceptible to relatively minor interference; the consequence is not only complete outages but also inaccurate position or time data (GO-Science, 2018, p. 7). Within maritime operations, this has evolved from an exceptional circumstance to a routine operational concern. The Royal Institute of Navigation (RIN) working group found that 75% of surveyed participants report interference as persistent or worsening, with repercussions across bridge systems, including critical safety equipment transmitting incorrect location data during emergencies (RIN, 2026, pp. 34–35). Policy must therefore focus on engineering resilience through diversification, robust monitoring, and reliable contingency capabilities; simply increasing the number of GNSS/PNT constellations does not resolve the problem, since signal weakness is a characteristic shared across all of them (GO-Science, 2018, p. 18; International Telecommunication Union, International Civil Aviation Organization and International Maritime Organization, 2025).
Whole Society Resilience CNI final
Energy resilience strategies are increasingly framed as technical problems, measured by aggregate outage duration and system performance. That framing conceals a distributional problem: disruptions to critical energy infrastructure do not land evenly. Vulnerability is not a property of individuals; it is embedded in structural positions shaped by economic marginalisation, political exclusion, and constrained access to resources long before a hazard event occurs. This article argues that designing energy infrastructure resilience without explicit equity governance will, by default, reproduce the inequalities it nominally addresses. Drawing on Panteli and Mancarella's (2015) engineering resilience framework and Coleman et al.'s (2023) three-dimensional equity model, along with Wisner et al.'s (2004) Pressure and Release model, the article examines the trade-offs among technical performance, economic feasibility, and social equity in power system design. Empirical cases, such as Texas Winter Storm Uri in 2021 and the protracted grid failure in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria in 2017, demonstrate that accumulated underinvestment and politically determined restoration sequencing concentrate outage burdens on communities least able to absorb them. The article extends the analysis to GNSS-dependent timing infrastructure as an underexamined equity risk embedded in grid operations. It concludes that hybrid hardening strategies and microgrid architectures are necessary but not sufficient; they require procedural governance frameworks that go beyond consultation, together with regulatory systems that embed equity floors and deprivation cost accounting as mandatory design constraints rather than optional refinements.